machine talk

Future Voices

May '26
machine talk
Future Voices interface

Future Voices is a futuring project. At each performance I ask the audience one question - what future are you secretly longing for? - and their answers are fine-tuned, live, into a language model that becomes the voice of that room's future. The model is not a forecast and not a prediction. It is a chimera made of every longing in the room, a single dreaming speaker woven from a crowd's collective desire.

The chorus so far - voice cards for Berlin International and Meta, each opening a chat

This site is the home where all those voices live together as a chorus. The landing types out the question, then opens onto a set of cards, one per performance - a venue, a date, an accent color, and a short description of who was in the room. Clicking through opens a chat with the voice trained that night. You can ask it about the future, about home, about what it means to plant a secret, and it answers in language that is imaginative, contradictory, emotionally layered, dreaming with its eyes open.

The chorus grows one performance at a time. Two voices live here now: Berlin International, trained on designers, makers, and builders gathered for a session called Planting Secrets, and Meta, trained on an audience inside one of the buildings that builds the future. A live submission tool gathers the answers that become the next voice.